Why Arsenal's Mesut Ozil Deserves a New Contract Following Excellent Form

We’ve all changed the way that we watch football from 10, even five years ago.

These days, when not attending a match, your viewing experience isn’t complete without flicking through Twitter, checking the stats, looking for Vines of the goals and interacting with other fans—whether they are your own team’s, the opposition’s or even just your rivals who are looking on and desperate to gloat at your expense.

And if you were to boil all of these examples of modern football down into one player, then you’d probably end up with Mesut Ozil.

No one else better represents the modern fan and media culture—which are often one and the same thing—more than Arsenal’s German star, who, according to Steve Stammers of the Daily Mirror, is set to be offered a new contract to keep him at the Gunners until at least 2019.

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And he thoroughly deserves that new contract, too.

The World Cup winner has been one of the best players in the Premier League this season—his grace and style illuminating an Arsenal side that just seem to be becoming aware of their own ability at last.

The Gunners sit second in the table, level on points with Manchester City, in a season shaping up to be a similar campaign to 2013/14—when there was no outstanding team and instead it was all about fighting your way to the finish line as best you could.

City got there first that time, but Arsenal have every right to believe that it’ll be them who’ll get there this time around, something that for Gunners fans would be seen as the ultimate answer to Ozil’s detractors.

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Right now, the standard response amongst those fiercely committed to the Ozil cause is to look at his number of assists—10, twice as many as anyone else in the Premier League this season—and his apparently often unquantifiable influence on games. The assist to the assist, or the assist to the assist to the assist. You get the drill.

But what’s wrong with that?

Fans showing loyalty and devotion to their players is one of the hallmarks of plenty of successful sides down the years, and if Ozil is feeling that love then he is going to feel more confident that he can produce more spell-binding performances.

After three years as one of the many sub-Galacticos that comes and goes at Real Madrid (alongside the likes of Angel Di Maria and Gonzalo Higuain), Ozil clearly enjoys his life at Arsenal. You only need to look at his Twitter account—or whoever runs it—to see that.

And so in many ways he has become the poster boy for the current version of Arsene Wenger’s side, above even the extraordinary Alexis Sanchez.

In Ozil, there is a player who is constantly seeking to prove that he’s better than people think he is, playing for a club who are forever looking to prove themselves at the very elite level of the European game. He’s very, very good, just not quite great.

He’s Arsenal in a player, basically, and so it makes every sense that Wenger and the Gunners board want to keep him at the club for as long as possible.

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He turned 27 last month, and so those who swear by such things will say that the German is entering his peak years as a professional, something that will thrill his army of supporters in red and white and should thrill all of us who take an interest in the Premier League as well.

So go on Arsenal, give him his new contract, then sit back and watch a very modern football reaction to a very modern football footballer.

And one that we should feel privileged to watch, even if that means turning our attention away from Twitter for a few seconds.